Author: Badalian Vardan

ANS TV, Azerbaijan
April 4 2012

Russian foreign minister says new war over Karabakh to be “disaster”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said that a new war over Nagornyy
Karabakh will be a “disaster”.

“If there is a war between the sides, it will be a disaster,” Sergey Lavrov said
in remarks aired by Azerbaijani private ANS TV channel on 4 April. Lavrov, who
is visiting Baku, was speaking in Russian with superimposed Azerbaijani
translation at Moscow State University’s branch in Baku.

He added that Russia is “deeply concerned over the situation and the war between
our close and kind neighbours”.

“We have been striving for the resolution of this conflict [over Nagornyy
Karabakh] from the very start. During the past two or three years, Russian
President Dmitriy Medvedev personally put forward his suggestions, with Russia
being a co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group. He continued the trilateral meetings
with the Azerbaijani and Armenian presidents. We can say that throughout these
years, the disputed issues between the sides have decreased. However, an
agreement has not been reached on two or three most important and difficult
issues,” Lavrov said.

ANS TV quoted Sergey Lavrov as saying that “distrust between Azerbaijan and
Armenia” is one of the reasons for a stalemate in the conflict resolution.

The International Herald Tribune, France
April 5, 2012 Thursday

Exiles hope to revive Christian area in Turkey

by SUSANNE GÜSTEN
IDIL, Turkey

ABSTRACT

Robert Tutus, a Syrian Christian who left Turkey for asylum in
Germany, is among others who hope to “keep the Syriac language and
culture alive in Idil, and to remind people that this is the home of
the Syriacs.”

FULL TEXT

Clambering over the rubble of what was once his hometown, Robert Tutus
pointed to a spot just up the road from where his family’s house had
stood.

”This is where my father was assassinated,” he said. ”Two men
walked up to him as he was returning home one evening, and killed him
with a bullet to his head.”

His father, Sukru Tutus, was the last Christian mayor of Azeh, known
as Idil in Turkish, a town in southeastern Anatolia that traces its
Christianity back to the time of the Apostles.

Within a month of his killing, which happened on June 17, 1994, Mr.
Tutus recalled last month, the remaining Christian population of the
town, several hundred people at the time, had gathered their
belongings and fled to asylum in Western Europe.

The departure marked the end of the Christian era of Azeh, which had
been a bishop’s seat as early as the second century and home to a
Christian population of several thousand until the late 1970s.

Only ruins scattered about the hillside remain of their town today,
while above it shabby concrete buildings rise to form the new town of
Idil, inhabited by local Kurds and Arabs as well as a few Turkish
administrators on temporary postings to the east.

And then there is Mr. Tutus, 42, camped out in an apartment in one of
those buildings while he tries to reclaim his father’s properties and
rebuild his parental home among the ruins on the hillside.

”This is our home, the home of the Syriac people,” Mr. Tutus said.
”We will not give it up.”

The plateau of Tur Abdin, upon which Idil lies nestled between the
Syrian plain and the mountain ranges of southeastern Turkey, is the
historical heartland of the Syriac Orthodox Church, whose patriarchate
resided here until tensions with the Turkish republic pushed it to
move to Syria in 1933.

The region is still dotted with Syriac churches like Mor Gabriel,
which was founded in the year 397 and is one of the oldest active
monasteries in the world today. But apart from the monks, very few
Syriacs remain.

A century ago, they numbered 200,000 here, according to the European
Syriac Union, a diaspora organization. Some 50,000 survived the
massacres of Anatolian Christians during World War I, in which the
Syriac people shared the fate of the Armenians. Today, no more than
4,500 Syriac Christians, who speak a local dialect of the Aramaic
language as well as Arabic, Turkish and Kurdish, remain in Tur Abdin.

In Azeh, which held out against a siege by surrounding Kurdish
villages for months in 1915, the final push in the age-old power
struggle over the town began in 1977, when Mayor Sukru Tutus was
deposed by the Turkish authorities in what his successor, Abdurrahman
Abay, today freely acknowledges was a rigged election.
”The military commander, the judge, the district governor – they
encouraged me to run and they helped me” to win, Mr. Abay, chief of
the powerful Kurdish Kecan tribe, said last month over a glass of tea
in Idil. ”After the election, I received a telegram from Egypt, from
Anwar el-Sadat. It read: ‘I congratulate you on the Muslim conquest of
Idil.”’

The takeover brought the dramatic shift in the town’s demographics
that was completed in 1994, with Kurds from the surrounding villages
moving in as Syriac families sold up and joined the rising flow of
Christian migration from the Tur Abdin to Europe.

Today, 80,000 Syriacs from the Tur Abdin live in Germany, 60,000 in
Sweden, and 10,000 each in Belgium, Switzerland and the Netherlands,
according to estimates from the European Syriac Union.

Mr. Tutus found political asylum in Germany, together with his mother,
six sisters and three brothers, all but one of whom have since
acquired German citizenship and settled there.

A decade later, he was one of the first exiles to accept the Turkish
government’s public invitation to Syriacs to return home. It was
issued in 2001 under pressure from the European Union and repeated on
several occasions.

Although he carries a German passport, Mr. Tutus spends much of his
time in Idil, where he has overseen the restoration of the Church of
St. Mary and last year founded an Association for Syriac Culture.

”Our aim is to keep the Syriac language and culture alive in Idil,
and to remind people that this is the home of the Syriacs,” Mr. Tutus
said.
Although the association’s office was fire-bombed this year, Mr. Tutus
remains undeterred.

”We want the world to see that Syriacs still live here,” he said.

It is a desire he shares with hundreds of pioneering Syriacs across
the Tur Abdin, who have returned from exile in Europe in recent years
in an attempt to reclaim their heritage and pave the way for a
Christian resettlement of the region.

In the village of Kafro, 50 kilometers, or 30 miles, west of Idil,
villagers out for a stroll in the spring sunshine on their neatly
stone-flagged street last month gathered around a baby carriage to coo
over its occupant. They were admiring Nahir Demir, 1 year old, the
first offspring of his family to be born in Kafro since the Syriac
village was abandoned by order of the Turkish Army in 1994.

”My father was the last to go,” said Aziz Demir, 45, mayor of the
newly rebuilt village. The order to evacuate, he recalled, came at the
height of fighting between the army and Kurdish rebels in this region.

But when permission to return was issued in a brief bureaucratic
directive by the Turkish government in 2001, the Syriacs of Kafro
rushed back from Europe to rebuild their village and to resettle their
children in an ancient land they had never seen.

A dozen modern limestone villas now rise up over the ruins of the old
village of Kafro, complete with walled gardens and pink-tiled
bathrooms, built with the lifetime savings of Syriacs returning from
decades in the factories of Germany, Switzerland and Sweden.

Six years after the first moving trucks arrived, Kafro’s population is
around 50 and rising, despite the hazards. Both schooling and
employment prospects are poor in this impoverished region, where
neighboring Kurds herd sheep and ride donkeys to market.

”We knew it would not be easy, and we knew the risks,” said Israel
Demir, 46, builder of the villas and father of little Nahir as well as
of three teenage daughters transplanted from Goppingen, Germany, in
2006. ”But we also know our duty.”

That duty, Mr. Demir said, lies in ensuring the future of the Syriac people.

”I feel a great responsibility, toward my children and toward my
people, for safeguarding our homeland for future generations,” Mr.
Demir said in an interview in Kafro last month. ”Because I know that
when a people leaves its land, its home, it has no choice but to
assimilate. We can see it happening to our families in Europe and in
America. There is a danger that in a few decades the Syriacs will
cease to exist.”

Mr. Demir paid a personal price for his mission last year when he
barely survived after being shot by Kurdish shepherds while trying to
prevent them from grazing their flocks on village land.

But neither the hostility of the locals nor a perceived lack of
support from the Turkish authorities will deter him, he said.

”I am trying to open the door to the return of our people,” he said.
”I have pushed the door open. Now others must decide whether they
will follow me and step through it.”
In the neighboring village of Enhil, Fehmi Isler, 50, took a more
sober view of the future as he gazed out from the slim bell tower of
the village church over dozens of newly restored houses, one of them
his own.

”Only the older people come back, the ones who were born and raised
here,” he said.

Dormant in the winter, Enhil comes alive at Easter with the arrival of
300 to 400 Syriacs exiles from Western Europe who have restored their
family homes in the past few years for use as summer houses.

”But the young people won’t come, and who can blame them,” Mr. Isler
said. ”There’s nothing for them to do here but gaze at the cattle and
collect cow patties.”
Mr. Isler, who was in Enhil to bury an aunt, who died in a retirement
home in Augsburg, Germany, in keeping with her last wish, said his own
five children had made the trip from Germany only once.

”No Internet, no mobile phones, no swimming pool – forget it,” he
said. ”And the Kurdish women yelled at the girls to show some modesty
and cover up.”

In Idil, Mr. Tutus is similarly skeptical of his chances of success in
attempting to persuade the Syriac diaspora to resettle in Idil. With
the war raging on between Kurdish rebels and the Turkish Army, it is
an uphill struggle, he said.

”Everyone talks about returning, but it’s just talk,” he said. ”I’m
here fighting for our return, but they’re sitting tight over there.”

Even Mr. Tutus’s wife, a Syriac herself, and his children, aged 11 and
7, will not come, preferring to stay in Frankfurt after being badly
frightened during a visit to Idil.
”There was a power cut and gunfire in the street at night,” Mr.
Tutus said. ”After that, they refused to come back.”

Today’s Zaman, Turkey
April 8 2012

‘Truth commissions better than courts to deal with difficult past’

8 April 2012 / YONCA POYRAZ DOÄ?AN, Ä°STANBUL

A distinguished professor of contemporary history has said that truth
commissions are better than courts for dealing with difficult past
events, such as Turkey’s Sept. 12, 1980 coup d’état, many people are
responsible to different degrees.

`The problem with the prosecution is that it just takes a few
individuals to account for criminal responsibility, whereas if you
have a truth commission, a larger process, then you can explore the
whole historical background and understand all the connections without
having to do with [the] very specific thing of proving … criminal
responsibility,’ said Timothy Garton Ash, the Isaiah Berlin
professorial fellow at St. Antony’s College, Oxford, for Monday Talk.

The Ankara 12th High Criminal Court has begun to hear the case against
retired general and former President Kenan Evren as well as former Air
Forces commander Tahsin Å?ahinkaya — the two surviving leaders of the
bloody 1980 coup that shaped the country for three decades. The trial
of the coup leaders was made possible by a government-sponsored reform
package, approved by a referendum in 2010, that annulled a
constitutional article that had served as a legal shield for the coup
leaders.

The Sept. 12, 1980 military coup was the bloodiest and most
well-planned in Turkish history. A total of 650,000 people were
detained during this period and records were kept at police stations
on 1,683,000 people. A total of 230,000 people were tried in 210,000
cases, mostly for political reasons. A further 517 people were
sentenced to death, while 7,000 people faced charges that carried a
sentence of capital punishment. Of those who were sentenced to death,
50 were executed. As a result of unsanitary and inhumane living
conditions and torture in prisons, a further 299 people died in
custody.

Many had to flee the country and thousands were fired from academic
and government offices. The Sept. 12 coup has also had the
longest-lasting effects of all of Turkey’s four coups; Turkey’s
current Constitution and several government agencies, such as the
Higher Education Board (YÃ-K), are remnants of the Sept. 12 period.

During his working visit to Ä°stanbul, Garton Ash answered our
questions on the coup trial and elaborated on other topics.

You’re in Turkey at the time of an important process; more than 30
years after the Sept. 12, 1980 military takeover, a criminal court has
begun to hear the case against two retired, surviving leaders of the
1980 coup. Would you share your thoughts with us regarding this
process?

It’s something I thought about a great deal, because the general
question is how … countries deal with [a] difficult past, and almost
every country in Europe and in the world have some difficult past — a
dictatorship, a military regime, an occupation, a war, a genocide, a
civil war. We have Northern Ireland in Britain, the Basque Country in
Spain, and Poland’s relations with Jewish and Ukrainian citizens.
Wherever you look, there is some such difficult issue. And it is
important for a democracy that it knows its own history and faces up
to [its] difficult past. In principle, it is a good thing. I myself
think that putting very old men and women on trial can be a rather
problematic way to go about this, because there are many individuals,
many officers in a structure, in a system; that’s what you have to get
at. And unless it was one charismatic individual — Adolf Hitler,
[Francisco] Franco, Idi Amin or whoever it might be — I worry about
the use of a criminal trial many many years later for that purpose. To
give you another example, something I personally experienced directly
was the imposition of [a] so-called state of war in Poland in 1981,
when General [Wojciech Witold] Jaruzelski used the Polish Army to
crush the Solidarity movement. So I’m no friend of General Jaruzelski.
Do I think that at the age of — whatever it is, high 80s, early 90s
— he should still be in court? No, I think he should be in a truth
commission where he’s forced under oath to tell the truth, to
apologize [for] what was done.

Many human rights groups and associations also hope that the trial
will shed light on a number of deadly incidents that are now known to
have been orchestrated by behind-the-scenes groups working to
legitimize the coup. Do you think this is possible?

In an illegitimate and oppressive situation, many people are
responsible in different degrees, and the problem with the prosecution
is that it just takes a few individuals to account for criminal
responsibility, whereas if you have a truth commission, a larger
process, then you can explore the whole historical background and
understand all the connections without having to do with [the] very
specific thing of proving … criminal responsibility. In truth
commissions, rather than having to deny what they did for fear of
going to prison, people can make amends by telling the truth, which is
what happened in South Africa.

`Danger of war has not disappeared’

You said at a conference in Turkey that Turkey is a swing state for
the future of Europe just as China is a swing state for the future of
the world. You also said that Turkey is a swing state for freedom of
expression. Would you elaborate on those ideas?

Turkey is a swing state for Europe in the sense that the future of
Europe depends on its relationship with its wider neighborhood, in the
east and the southeast toward the Middle East. I don’t need to tell
you that Turkey is pivotal to that future. Plus, Turkey’s very
favorable demography, young population and plus the economic dynamism
of this country — all of that makes it a swing state for Europe. A
swing state for freedom of expression because if you can demonstrate
that a majority Muslim country with an Islamist party in the
government in a quite `unfree’ neighborhood actually can have
consistent standards on freedom of expression, that would be a very
important signal for the West and the wider neighborhood.

Shall we say Islamic party or Islamist for the ruling party of Turkey
considering the negative connotations attached?

There is a tendency in the West to equate Islamists with terrorist.
It’s quite important to emphasize there is a category of Islamist
party, that is to say political Islam, and which is not in any way
connected to the use of violence and which can respect the rule of
law. Don’t get me wrong; I don’t think this government in all respects
all the time does that; vigilance is needed. But it has certainly
moved a long way in the right direction. If I think about the future
of Egypt, for example, where, as you know, different Islamist parties
won the last election, if their future moved in the Turkish direction
— soft or moderate Islamist parties respecting the basic rules of
democracy — that would be very good news indeed. It would be
wonderful if we could have Islamic democratic parties in the way we
have Christian democratic parties in Western Europe. Remember, [the]
Roman Catholic Church fought liberalism for centuries, fought it very
hard, and gradually accepted liberalism in the sense of an equal
liberty for all, a level playing field. And the political expression
of that was [a] liberal Christian democratic party, Angela Merkel’s
CDU [Christian Democratic Union of Germany]. If the AK Party [Turkey’s
ruling Justice and Development Party] can be understood as part of a
rather complex, difficult evolution in that direction, it would be a
very good thing indeed.

I’ll come back to the free speech issue, but since you mentioned some
divergences in the world with regards to respecting and adopting
universal values, I’d like to ask you how nations of the world will be
able to reach a consensus on global issues.

This is the biggest question of our time because the danger we face is
that the world we are moving into is like 19th century Europe. We in
the European Union, 20 years ago, had the naïve illusion that the
world was going to become like us — liberal, internationalist, shared
sovereignty, ever increasing cooperation. The world we are in is the
world of sovereign nation states competing for power — China, India,
Brazil, Russia, Turkey and America. The European Union is [the]
exception rather than the rule. The danger would be if the competition
between those divergent, very different sovereign states became more
acute. And I want to emphasize that the danger of war has not
disappeared at all in the world. Periods of power shifts, rising and
falling powers — China rising, America falling — are periods of
increased danger, increased tension. We have to start from that and
how we can avoid war and achieve international cooperation in this
transformed situation.

`It’s a mistake to lump Muslims all together’

At the same conference, distinguished economics professor Raghuram
Rajan raised the question whether this is going to turn [people]
against foreigners, immigrants. And you said yes, it already has.

In Europe, it already has. If you look at the party of Marine Le Pen
in France, if you look at Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, if you
look at the English Defense League, if you look at the True Finns —
wherever you look in Western Europe, I could go on, xenophobic
populist parties `scapegoating’ the foreigners are getting 15, 18,
20-25 percent of the vote; they [have] already started to influence
the mainstream politics. This is extremely worrying, and, of course,
the economic crisis and unemployment feed into that. There is an
anti-capitalist left which blames the crisis on capitalism, but much
more xenophobic populists who blame the foreigners.

Who are the foreigners?

Many of them are Muslims. Actually, you have to take that apart,
because Kashmiris in Bedford are very different from Moroccans in
Madrid, who are different from Turkish [people] in Germany. It’s a
mistake to lump them all together. But that’s what all those parties
do — a very serious danger.

And there are racist attacks happening in Europe. Are politicians to blame?

There is plenty of blame to go around. It’s the oldest story in the
book, when things get tough, blame the other. It happens in this
country [Turkey], too; it’s hardly surprising. I think that media has
a significant responsibility. I quoted one headline from a British
tabloid: `Muslims rob neighbor’s house’ — not Christians, not
thieves. That’s stereotyping. Mainstream politicians — for example,
[French President] Nicolas Sarkozy would be a good example — and
opinion leaders and intellectuals have not done enough to counter
this. There is a strong current in European intellectual discourse
which says Islam is the problem and does not differentiate all the
different ways in which people of the Muslim faith behave in different
circumstances, behave in democracies. Everyday in Oxford, I interact
routinely — in the pharmacy, in the grocer’s shop, in the university,
at the dentist — with Muslims. It’s part of [the] everyday, normal
fabric of life.

`Law should do minimum necessary when limiting free speech’

Should there be legal limitations to free speech? First of all, you
advocate a code of ethics, a code of behavior that we should adopt
without thinking about laws. But you also say there should of course
be laws. Would you explain that?

The law should do the minimum necessary. Drawing up a hate speech
legislation which is effective in protecting vulnerable minorities of
all kinds is extremely difficult to do. I think the law should target,
above all, incitement to violence of any kind, actual violence and
what Susan Benesch calls dangerous speech, that is to say, speech in a
certain context which makes kinds of violence or discrimination more
probable. Beyond that, as adults we should take responsibility
ourselves. We as scholars, we as journalists, we as members of a
particular community — be it a university, a town, a place of work —
take responsibility with how we live with other people. And the more
we can do it for ourselves, the better. Your project on media ethics
[ is the website of the Media Ethics Platform for
Turkish journalists] sounds to me [like] exactly the kind of thing we
should do. It is much better that journalists should themselves work
out the codes of practice voluntarily than it is imposed on them by
some state apparatus or legal apparatus which almost has invariably
has some political agenda behind it.

You also advocate no bans on Holocaust denial or on the denial of the
much-debated Armenian genocide. And some countries try to bring or
have already brought restrictions on that. Would you explain the
dangers here?

One of our 10 draft principles on freedom of expression
[] is that there should be no taboos in
the discussion and dissemination of knowledge. It applies to
scientific knowledge, medical knowledge or historical knowledge, to
the extent that we cannot find historical truth at all, that is found
by testing all hypotheses, including the most extreme ones, against
the available evidence and then having free historical debate. So let
one scholar say what happened to the Armenians in 1915 was …
genocide; let another argue that it was not. And then let us have free
historical debate, testing against the evidence by the known laws of
historical scholarship. Then citizens will make up their own minds on
what happened. That should be true of the Holocaust of the European
Jews, it should be true of what I would call the Armenian genocide,
because I think it qualifies for it, but I think the word around which
the whole hysteria comes — `genocide’ — is less important than the
fact of mass dying, of mass suffering, of mass killing. So I argue
that there should not be laws criminalizing the denial of the
Holocaust of the European Jews, the denial of the Armenian genocide.
There should also be no laws like Turkey’s Article 301, used to put
people in court for arguing that it was [genocide]. History should be
the subject of free debate.

You have some worries about Turkish practices in that regard.

Absolutely; there are some areas [in] which, unfortunately, Turkey is
not doing very well. The obvious ones are the Article 301 issue and
the way it’s been used, the overbroad use of national security claims
— Turkey is not the only country in that regard. In many countries,
this is one of the most-used ways to close down [freedom of
expression] even in the United States and Britain in the name of the
war on terror. And the question on genuinely open and diverse media —
this is not only about the number of journalists in prison, even
though this is hotly debated in Turkey at the moment. It is also a
matter of media ownership, a matter of atmosphere for self-censorship,
a matter of entanglement between people in different kinds of power —
political and economic power — and journalists and so on. Having a
strong, open, diverse media is really vital to a liberal democracy.

`Shocking oppression in Syria, but Turkey should not go alone’

It is quite clear now that recent messages relayed by Turkey to the
general region have created expectations, certainly among Syrians,
that Turkey will be embracing a more active role in Syria. How would
you evaluate this situation?

I was hesitant at the beginning but later decided to support
intervention in Libya because it was pretty clear that [Muammar]
Gaddafi was planning a massacre in Benghazi, and the moral trigger for
humanitarian intervention is the mass murder of civilians. [Syrian
President Bashar] Assad has already done it in Homs and elsewhere.
What happened there under the eyes of the world is quite shocking. And
the way some Syrian people continued to go on the streets and
demonstrate peacefully is extraordinarily impressive in the face of
such violence. So, in principle, something should be done. However, it
is almost invariably a bad idea for one country on its own to
interfere in the affairs of another country by force, saying we know
best. That was wrong when the United States intervened in Iraq. I
suspect something in the direction of humanitarian corridors and
no-fly zones may come and may even be needed, but it’s crucial how
it’s done. It has to be done in a context of multilateral support.
Even if the Turkish military might be a significant part of the actual
manpower and firepower, the support of the Arab League, the support of
other neighbors and the support [of] as many as possible of the
world’s democracies [and], if possible, a degree of UN support —
there you have the problem of Russia and China — is essential. Yes,
there is a strong case for ratcheting up the elements of humanitarian
intervention against the really shocking oppression that is happening
in Syria, but it would be a great mistake if Turkey has decided to go
alone.

With the exception of Russia and China, you’ve been stressing that
this is quite an important issue. What if those countries insist on
their divergent positions?

This is the bad world that we might get into, which is a 21st century
world like 19th century Europe, where you had these competing great
powers. Russia has a direct national and economic interest; it has a
special relationship with Syria, defending its interests with a
hypocritical argument that we have to look at all the armed groups.
And in this particular case, China is following the Russian lead
because China does not have a direct stake in Syria. It simply takes a
position in defense of state sovereignty. Here, the real problem is
with Russia.

`If Turkey went in the BRICs direction, it would contribute to global
disintegration’

You say the winners of globalization have been Brazil, Russia, India
and China — BRICs — plus Turkey, as they have been providing energy
for the world economy. But you placed Turkey in a category of its own.
What is it that makes Turkey different?

That is the Turkish question of the moment. It has a dynamic,
fast-growing economy; cheap, skilled labor; considerable regional
ambition; national pride; attention to national sovereignty; pride in
the Ottoman heritage — all these are characteristics of BRICs-type
countries. On the other hand, the incredibly close ties with the
United States, long-term membership of NATO [and] close ties with
Europe in many ways put it in a quite different category. Turkey is a
swing state in that sense. If it went decisively in the BRICs
direction, it would contribute to the global disintegration,
divergence. If it says, `We can best realize our own national and
regional interests in the larger context of the European Union’ —
which I hope it will do — then it will contribute to a more
integrated and a well-ordered world.

What would you say about the reality of a lack of or a diminishing
will on both sides for Turkey’s European integration?

It’s been going up and down. Nobody is saying no. Both sides say yes
in principle. My message to Turkey would be please don’t give the
enemies of enlargement in Europe pretext for continuing to delay to
keep Turkey out. As you approach membership in the EU, you have to be
whiter than white, cleaner than clean… There is a certain hypocrisy
in that, because once you’re inside, the standards are lowered — look
at Berlusconi’s Italy, look at Hungary today. Nonetheless, as someone
who believes that Turkey needs Europe, Europe needs Turkey, I hope
Turkey does not supply those pretexts for Europe to continue to say a
`yes’ which in fact means no.

PROFILE

Timothy Garton Ash, a prominent voice in contemporary world politics

The author of nine books of political writing or the `history of the
present,’ which have charted the transformation of Europe over the
last 30 years, Timothy Garton Ash is a professor of European studies
at the University of Oxford, an Isaiah Berlin professorial fellow at
St. Antony’s College, Oxford, and a senior fellow at the Hoover
Institution of Stanford University. His essays appear regularly in The
New York Review of Books and he writes a weekly column in the
Guardian, which is widely syndicated in Europe, Asia and the Americas.
Throughout the 1980s, he reported and analyzed the emancipation of
Central Europe from communism in contributions to The New York Review
of Books, The Independent, The Times and the Spectator.

Professor Garton Ash directs freespeechdebate.com — in 13 languages
— which has 10 draft principles on global free expression that were
thrashed out in discussions with free speech experts, lawyers,
political theorists, theologians, philosophers, activists and
journalists from around the world.

The Times (London), UK
April7, 2012 Saturday
Edition 1;Ireland

The other side of Jerusalem

Most visitors stay in the West of the Holy City. But stay in the East
and you’ll find a different world, says Matthew Teller

Matthew Teller

Jerusalem looked simple from atop the Mount of Olives. At the back of
the panorama jostle cranes and office blocks. In the midground I
picked out steeples and arched windows. At the front your eyes glue
themselves to the Dome of the Rock, glittering gold above the Old
City’s battlements.

“Do you read the Bible?” In among the tour groups oohing and aahing, a
local guide introduced himself as Bassam. “If you read the Bible,” he
said, “you’ll know Jerusalem is in Heaven. This one [he gestured] is
the Jerusalem in Hell.”

We traced the invisible line – fixed in international law, but
disputed by Israel – that slices across the view, demarcating West
Jerusalem from East Jerusalem. We walked down the hill into the Old
City together, passing the gnarled olive trees of the Garden of
Gethsemane.

Voices rose at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where Jesus is said
to have died. At the Western Wall, lips murmured under knotted brows.
But even when we reached the Zion Gate on Jerusalem’s invisible border
line, its Ottoman stonework punctured with bullet holes, Bassam did
not mention East or West. You rarely hear locals make the distinction.
Many Palestinians feel that the whole city is under occupation. To
most Israelis the city has been liberated. Neither, linguistically,
acknowledges the other. But the distinction is important.

All the key religious sites are in the Old City, which is part of East
Jerusalem, an area annexed by Israel after the Six Day War in 1967.
Most tourists stay elsewhere: of the city’s 9,335 hotel rooms, almost
8,000 are in West Jerusalem. Stay in the East and you find another
city, Arabic in language and Palestinian in culture.

Sultan Suleiman Street is the anchor, its minibuses and fruit barrows
laid against the Old City walls like keepsakes on a forgotten shelf.
To one side the elegant curve of Salah ad Din now holds mostly ladies’
fashion shops and pizza parlours, between decaying 19th-century
mansions of golden Jerusalem stone.

Round the corner on Nablus Road, I filled a morning at the serene
Garden Tomb, an alternative site for the Crucifixion, before hooking
up with an old friend. Bald, round and twinkling, Khalil has Jerusalem
roots going back centuries. When I asked for culinary advice, he was
unequivocal: “You should go for a Zalatimo. Come on, I’ll take you.”

Sunbeams in flagstoned lanes split and ” reformed as Khalil gave me
the back story. In 1860 a Jerusalem merchant named Mohammed Zalatimo
opened a shop selling mutabbaq, a sweet pastry. It became so famous
that, like Mr Hoover and Mr Biro, man and product merged. In the
crowded, fragrant souks, beside a stall blaring Arabic pop, we halted
in front of an unmarked aluminium-framed glass door. Zalatimo’s dim,
tiled interior, wedged under the walls of the Holy Sepulchre, held
four small tables beneath stone cross-vaults.

A family group was just leaving, their silk scarves and jewellery
incongruous under the dangling light bulbs. They were going back to
Jordan, they said. When they arrived, they came straight to
Zalatimo’s. They had returned for another before departing. It was the
taste of Jerusalem.

With generations of knowledge in his fingers, preparation took seconds
for Hani Zalatimo, a great-great-grandson of Mohammed. Dough thrown by
hand ended up so thin that you could see the speckled counter beneath.
A crumble of sheep’s cheese preluded four folds. After a few minutes
in the oven, each crispy bite was both sweet and savoury, the melted
cheese and pastry combining masterfully.

It energised Khalil. He whisked me through the Old City’s alleys,
calling out greetings every few metres. I remember anArmenianbakery
without a sign, where a customer told us that he had travelled three
hours to buy sfiha, an open-faced meat pasty. At the 19th-century
Izhiman coffee shop, Khalil joked about old Mr Izhiman, who in the
1920s used to drive between Jerusalem and Bethlehem, selling coffee
out of his car window.

In the butchers’ souk we dodged the severed heads and buckets of offal
to dine on flavourful, almost winey, kofte at Abu Shaheen’s renowned
kebab restaurant, the lamb chopped by hand with a secret family spice
mixture. Khalil said: “You see? The Holy Sepulchre, the mosque, the
Western Wall – it’s just decoration for the real Jerusalem. Some
people want the city as a museum. But we are alive.”

In the afternoons, when the Old City tour groups began streaming back
to the buzz of West Jerusalem, I passed sage sellers and money
changers into gentler East Jerusalem. Salah ad Din felt like a
provincial high street. I browsed with a frothy coffee at bookshops
and galleries, and ate zingy over-lemoned Lebanese mezze among quiet
diners.

Off Salah ad Din stands the St George Hotel, opened in 1965, when East
Jerusalem was Jordanian. Photos show King Hussein striding through the
lobby, only 29-years-old, his smile as tight as his buttoned suit.

The hotel survived a generation. Last month, after a top-to-toe
renovation by a consortium of Palestinian investors, it opened again –
without royalty this time. It is a snazzy refit, featuring acres of
rosy wood panelling, chunky designer furniture, fabrics in chocolate
and burgundy and a rooftop pool offering a domes-and-steeples
panorama. The manager of the hotel, Tareq Al Naser, is proud as Punch.

“This is the first new luxury hotel in East Jerusalem since, well,
since the last time it was,” he grinned, showing me an old olive tree,
around which the ground-floor courtyard has been rebuilt. “And it’s
the only one that is Palestinian owned and operated.”

Another original feature is the marble flooring, swirling pinkish
stone quarried at nearby Beit Fajjar. As Tareq guides me under the
lobby lights for a better view, I realise that I am striding where
Hussein strode, 47 years ago.

Back then Arab Jerusalem was another country. It still feels like it today.

A guide to Arab Jerusalem Stay At the St George Landmark (00 972 2627
7232, stgeorgelandmark.com) double rooms with breakfast cost from
£110. Until it launches fully on May 31, rates are reduced by about 30
per cent.

Eat Askadinya, in an atmospheric 19th-century mansion at 11 Samaan Al
Siddiq (00 972 2532 4590), serves upmarket Palestinian and
contemporary European cuisine. For Arabic fine dining head to
Arabesque at the American Colony hotel, 1 Louis Vincent (00 972 2627
9777). Shop Browse for Jerusalem’s famous hand-paintedArmenian
ceramics at PalestinianArmenianPottery, 14 Nablus Road (Mon-Sat,
9am-4pm, palestinianpottery.com).

For fair-trade crafts, visit Sunbula, 7 Nablus Road (Mon-Sat 10am-6pm;
sunbula.org). Educational Bookshop, 22 Salah Eddin (daily, 8am-8pm,
www.educationalbookshop.

com). Visit The Alternative Tourism Group (atg.ps) and Siraj Center
(sirajcenter.org), Palestinian NGOs for sustainable tourism, can
organise guides, tailored itineraries and home stays. Al-Quds
University () runs regular half-day
walking tours, guided by academics. Green Olive Tours
(greenolivetours.com) also offers walks.

Some people ” want this city as a museum. But we are alive

Prosperous Armenia launches parliament race in Abovyan

April 8, 2012 – 18:21 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net – Prosperous Armenia coalition party launched its
parliamentary race in Abovyan, the native city of party leader Gagik
Tsarukyan.

As Tsarukyan said at the meeting with local residents, the party’s
electoral plan will focus on resolving social issues in the country,
creating jobs, reducing emigration flow.

`A work well done, rather than friends in high places, is the main
value for the party,’ Tsarukyan stressed, calling those gathered for
support at oncoming elections.

Parliamentary elections are due in Armenia on May 6 featuring 8
political parties, Republican Party of Armenia (RPA), Prosperous
Armenia, ARF Dashnaktsutyun (ARFD), Orinats Yerkir, Heritage,
Democratic Party of Armenia (DPA), Communist Party of Armenia and
United Armenian party, as well as one election bloc represented by
opposition Armenian National Congress (ANC).

Prosperous Armenia candidate list is topped by party leader,
entrepreneur Gagik Tsarukyan, ex-Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian and
the Minister of Urban Development Vardan Vardanyan.

AZERBAIJAN FAILS TO INVESTIGATE HARASSMENT OF OCCRP REPORTER
By Valerie Hopkins

hetq
02:20, April 7, 2012

Azerbaijani journalist and OCCRP Regional CoordinatorKhadija
Ismayilova’s requests for a full investigation into her harassment and
defamation have been unmet by the Azerbaijani government, Isamyilova
said at a press conference today.

“The evidence shows that the government agencies were involved in
the crime and prosecutor’s office fails to act as an independent
investigative body,” said Ismayilova.

Results of an investigation she conducted with her lawyer and other
journalists revealed that illegal monitoring of the journalist
began just days after she published an story about the Azerbaijani
President’s family’s businesses.

On March 7, Ismayilova received an envelope with pictures of a
personal nature and a note saying, “whore, behave, or you will be
defamed.” A week after Ismayilova went public about the threats and
asked the Prosecutor General to open an investigation, the pictures
were published in newspapers connected to the ruling political party
and a private video of her was published on a website registered to
a United States IP address.

The investigation was opened only two days later, on March 16.

Ismayilova demanded that the government open an investigation on
charges of harassment of a journalist and invasion of privacy, but
the prosecutor’s office is only investigating the latter.

With the help of a team of journalists and lawyers, Ismayilova
conducted her own filmed investigation and found numerous wires in
the walls and ceilings of her bedroom, bathroom and kitchen. The
wires found are used for telephone communications, web cameras,
audio equipment, and electricity. New paint had been added to cover
up where the spy cameras had been placed.

The day after the initial search, Ismayilova said in the news
conference, she returned to the apartment with a group of journalists
and found that her home had been broken into again since their last
inspection. Lights left on and gloves were left in the kitchen that
were not left by Ismayilova or anyone she knew.

Ismayilova said that on March 19, she showed the results of her
investigation to the Prosecutor’s Office but they refused to comment
on it, and refused to invite a telecommunications expert to examine
the wires, Ismayilova said.

Ismayilova said her written requests for a detailed technical
examination by the Ministry of Communications, Baku Telefon
Communication Unit or the state-owned Automated Telephone Station
(ATS) were refused. Finally the investigator Nail Aliyev, a relative
of the security ministry chief, agreed to let a service man from the
ATS examine the connections.

The service man told investigators that last summer he received orders
from the ATS to connect a land line phone cable to the apartment. He
said he had been met by a middle aged man and was not allowed to enter
the apartment, where he heard sounds of construction. Ismayilova said
this occured while she was out of the country, just days after she
published a story implicating the first family in the ownership of
the countries monopoly mobile phone carrier.

In the news conference Ismayilova said that the investigator did
not include the serviceman’s testimony in their report and refused
to investigate who ordered the additional phone line to be installed
in Ismayilova’s apartment.

Ismayilova is a reporter for Radio Free Europe and hosts a popular
radio show. She is also the regional coordinator for the Caucasus
for OCCRP.

INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENTARY CANDIDATE ASSAULTED IN ARMENIAN PROVINCE

PanARMENIAN.Ne
April 7, 2012 – 11:14 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net – Some Armenian papers reported that Meruzhan Mkhoyan,
independent candidate running for the parliament by majority system
in Armavir province in Armenia was assaulted on April 6.

According to media reports, Mkhoyan was kidnapped from his own house
and then beaten severely at a local cemetery.

Son of Nahapet Gevorgyan, MP of the ruling Republican Party of Armenia
(RPA) was allegedly one of assaulters. The MP refuted this information
in an interview with Haykakan Zhamanak daily dubbing it as “lie and
another show staged ahead of elections”. He declared that nothing
happened, and he didn’t believe this could have occurred.

RPA candidate nominated in this constituency, owner of MAP company
Alik Petrosyan also told the paper he was unaware of the incident
saying he spent the whole day in Yerevan.

The paper says it didn’t manage to contact Prosperous Armenia’s MP
Rustam Gasparyan representing Armavir province, while the Prosperous
Armenia party said it had nothing to do with the incident.

TROIS MILITAIRES ARMENIENS BLESSES PAR UNE MINE
Krikor Amirzayan

armenews.com
samedi 7 avril 2012

Nous venons d’apprendre par le journal armenien ” Joghovourt ”
que 3 soldats Armeniens furent blesses le 31 mars par l’explosion
d’une mine près des positions frontalières du village de Tchinar
dans la region de Tavouche. ” Il etait pourtant interdit de prendre
la direction de cette zone minee, mais pour des raisons inconnues,
les soldats se sont diriges vers cette zone et marche sur une mine
qui a explose. Ces soldats grièvement blesses sont les appeles Khoren
Saribekian, Hovhannès Vartanian et le lieutenant Marat Krikorian. Tous
trois sont soignes a l’hôpital ” ecrit le journal.

17 ISLAMISTES ARRETES, UN AGENT DES FORCES DE SECURITE TUE
Ara

armenews.com
samedi 7 avril 2012

BAKOU, (AFP) – Dix-sept islamistes presumes, soupconnes de preparer
des attentats en Azerbaïdjan, ont ete arretes au cours d’une operation
des forces de l’ordre dans cette ex-republique sovietique du Caucase,
a annonce vendredi le ministère de la Securite nationale.

“17 membres d’un groupe illegal arme, qui preparaient des attentats
afin de saper la stabilite politique du pays, ont ete arretes”,
a declare le ministère dans un communique.

Des armes, des munitions, des explosifs et de la litterature a
caractère extremiste ont ete saisis au cours de cette operation qui
a eu lieu notamment a Bakou, la capitale de l’Azerbaïdjan, et dans
deux autres grandes villes du pays, Gandja et Soumgaït, a-t-il precise.

Un agent des forces de securite a peri dans un echange de tirs avec
des islamistes a Gandja et trois autres agents ont ete blesses, selon
le communique. L’un des militants islamistes a egalement ete tue,
selon la meme source.

Depuis la chute de l’URSS, l’islam connaît un regain d’influence dans
ce pays laïc et riche en hydrocarbures. Les autorites denoncent pour
leur part regulièrement la menace grandissante que representeraient
les extremistes islamistes.

Des critiques du regime affirment toutefois que les autorites utilisent
le spectre de l’extremisme pour persecuter des opposants politiques.

ROBERT DER MERGUERIAN LE 12 AVRIL
Aurelie Ohanian

armenews.com
samedi 7 avril 2012

La langue armenienne : valeur identitaire nationale

Le jeudi 12 avril 2011 a 20h, la Jeunesse Armenienne de France organise
une conference sur la thematique ” langue et identite armenienne ”
avec la participation exclusive de Robert Der Merguerian au Centre
Culturel de la JAF.

Robert Der Merguerian est professeur emerite a l’Universite de Provence
où il a fonde la chaire d’etudes armeniennes. La conference sera axee
autour de la thematique de la langue et de l’identite armenienne,
ainsi que de la transmission des valeurs culturelles identitaires. Il
nous presentera egalement son nouveau livre Manuel d’armenien moderne.

Langue de la famille indo-europeenne au meme titre que le grec, les
langues slaves ou germaniques, l’armenien est ecrit dans un alphabet
original cree il y a 1600 ans et toujours en usage.

L’ouvrage de Robert Der Merguerian se compose de deux manuels
independants consacres respectivement a la branche occidentale et a la
branche orientale. Chaque lecon expose les divergences linguistiques
de prononciation, de vocabulaire et de grammaire.

De nombreux tableaux comparatifs montrent les similitudes et les
differences a tous les niveaux de la langue : les parties du discours,
la conjugaison, la declinaison, l’orthographe.

Il peut interesser un public de toute origine qui desire s’initier a
une langue d’une richesse inepuisable, qui a traverse le temps avec
l’histoire du peuple armenien et qui demeure moderne.

Focus sur Robert Der Merguerian

Diplôme d’etudes superieures de philologie et d’anglais a l’Universite
d’Etat de Erevan et titulaire d’un Doctorat de linguistique armenienne
et de l’Habilitation a Diriger des Recherches a l’Universite
de Provence, Robert Der Merguerian est le fondateur de la chaire
d’etudes armeniennes, professeur emerite de langue et de civilisation
armeniennes a l’Universite de Provence. Il fait partie de ceux qui
ont contribue et contribuent toujours grandement a l’enseignement, la
diffusion et a la transmission de la langue et la culture armeniennes
en France. Suite a ses efforts persistants, la langue armenienne
a connu une reconnaissance academique et depuis 1994, grâce a son
nouveau statut, l’armenien peut etre choisi comme langue vivante 1
ou langue vivante 2 dans le premier groupe d’epreuves du Baccalaureat.

Robert Der Merguerian est egalement traducteur d’oeuvres litteraires
de l’armenien en francais, il a publie plus de 30 articles consacres a
la langue armenienne moderne. Il participe aux colloques et conferences
internationaux consacres a la langue et la civilisation armeniennes. Il
a organise a l’universite de Provence plusieurs colloques consacres
a la culture armenienne, dont le dernier s’est tenu en mars 2007 a
l’occasion de l’annee de l’Armenie en France. Il a aussi contribue
a l’accord de cooperation interuniversitaire entre l’Universite de
Provence et l’Universite d’Etat de Erevan. Robert Der Merguerian est
Docteur Honoris.